Back to the old school?
To quote Isaac Newton’s maxim, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is as true for indie rock as it is for gravitational phsyics. The history of alternative music, at least for the past 30 years, could be summed up as a tug-of-war between two opposed but co-existing forces; on one side you have those bands who see it as a soundboard for pop’s more experimental leanings, and on the other you have the fundamentalists who want to strip away abstraction and make balls-out melodic rock.
Over the past eight or nine years, the see-saw that is the Trans-Atlantic DIY scene has been pushing down quite heavily on the experimental side of the equation. Starting out with the weirdo dance punk of bands like Liars and !!!, the trend has been towards glitch, dance-influenced acts like The XX, Animal Collective and Caribou and down-tempo shoegaze acts like Still Corners and Beach House. However, fashions never stay the same, and judging by the sea of young faces leaning over to catch a glimpse of King Tuff at the Shacklewell tonight, it could be that the pendulum is about to swing back the other way.
For one of the leaders of the power-pop revival, King Tuff (or Kyle Thomas if you’re his mate) has gone a bit of an unusual route to get there. Starting out in freak-folk act Feathers before becoming the front-man of J Masic’s neo-stoner project Witch, his output in the mid-00s definitely fell into the more exploratory end of the indie rock spectrum. Even his 2008 debut ‘Was Dead’, despite sounding like something that would of lapped up by the CBGB’s crowd, featured a keen psychedelic edge. On this year’s self-titled album though, any sense of abstraction has almost been stripped off completely, leaving only the hook-heavy, pop core.
Kicking off on the Shacklewell Arms’ newly re-built stage, Tuff’s back-to-basics music sounds even more nostalgic live. Powered by air-punching riffs, crunchy distortion-led codas and the odd fret-shredding guitar solo, by the time the third song comes clattering out over the PA, it almost feels like a portal has opened up back to the tough, hard-headed rock and early new wave bands of the 1970s. Balancing precariously between Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and G.G. Allin, the out-of-timeness is all the more accentuated by a bass player who look likes he’s stepped straight from the set of Dazed and Confused and a guitarist with the biggest ‘fro I’ve seen in years.
As with most shows like this, it’s the crowd that makes it, and for a Tuesday night everyone at the Shacklewell seems unusually energetic. With a large contingent of kids dancing at the front and all the oldies crushed between each other and the back bar, there seems to be a usual amount of buzz for a band who are playing one of their first UK shows. My favourite part has to be when a drunken guy with a beanie hat perched on the back of his head jumps on stage to air guitar next to King Tuff as a sea of iPhones capture the moment for posterity. I can almost see the scene on Wednesday morning already, when he comes and sits down at the breakfast table and his mate holds his phone up and says ‘dude, do you remember air-guitaring in front of a whole room of people last night’?
Even though it might be one of the cringiest things I’ve seen at a gig for a very long time, the air-shredding and hip-shaking seemed oddly appropriate. Ending with a soaring rendition of ‘Sun Medallion’, King Tuff may not be the thinking person’s rock band, but they are a vital shot of old-timey rock-and-roll energy that unleashes the inner partying frat boy in people like myself. Although it’s too early to tell if all the shoegaze bands will suddenly be swept away by kids playing old-style power pop, it does look like it when the revolution comes, it’ll probably sound like something my dad will be in to.
King Tuff is playing The Lexington on the 26th of September with Fair Ohs and Colours.
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